I consider myself lucky to have grown up before the internet, but after local BBS' were a thing. My parents had absolutely no idea what went on in those systems, and I found the freedom incredible. Being able to explore and spread my wings a bit was a huge part of my childhood and teen years, and it wouldn't have been possible if my parents were hovering over my shoulder, or if I were unable to make an account because I wasn't 18.
That said, I was mostly dealing with griefers in Trade Wars or LoRD, and the worst thing I could find locally was GIFs of women in bikinis (and waiting for them to download was an excellent way to learn patience). I didn't have to worry so much about the threats that exist today online.
I am so grateful that I grew up when I did and got to experience that.
And when I was a kid some of my peers were watching Al Queda execution videos.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I do not think kids should have unrestricted access to the internet, especially if their parents can’t/won’t set limits.
I remember winning a 10-kill LORD game on a local BBS. It took ages of me staying up until midnight to kill all the resurrected players after the daily reset. I had only one real competitor on that server and he gave up after I slew the dragon twice in one week (due to great luck.)
Guess at some point in the future it will come out who bankrolled all this because multiple countries in Europe and America don’t just roll something like this out in 8 months organically without someone paying off politicians to push it
This seems like an attempt to leverage something widely regarded as reasonable (stop kids from accessing pornographic content without parental oversight) as the camel's nose through the tent to establish widespread identity tracking on the internet.
I think it's possible that there are secretive efforts to destroy permissionless access to the internet, but my guess is that states are simply copying each other and/or global conditions are similar enough that they naturally come to the same conclusions around the same time.
A somewhat analogous situation is how landlords raise rents in sync with each other, not because they're intentionally colluding to fix prices, but because nowadays it's easy to see average rental prices in neighborhoods, and the natural strategy is to set your rental prices based on that.
> my guess is that states are simply copying each other and/or global conditions are similar enough that they naturally come to the same conclusions around the same time.
Do you think the main force is misplaced good intentions (which I assume is what drives Ashton Kutcher) or more sinister intentional efforts to harm the public?
Off-topic, but actually a number of landlords raise prices in sync with each other because they use price-setting services like RealPage that intentionally try to maximize rents across multiple landlords. They just settled a lawsuit over this: https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-realpage-settlement-r...
The fight for this kind of legislature has been ongoing for many years as part of a broader program that seeks to shape the kinds of information that can be stored, consumed, and propagated on the Internet. Age verification is only one branch of the fight, but an important one to the many who support government control: it is an inroad that allows governments to say they have a stake in who sees what.
Do social movements _always_ have people at the top pulling the strings? Is it _never_ the case that even when you can identify thought leaders, the movement itself is organic and broadly supported?
It has nothing to do with age gating, and everything to do with tracking. While there may be some funding going on behind the scenes, governments love tracking on its own merits.
It would be excellent to know who is pushing this and through what means. There is some unprecedented alignment across borders to restrict access and rights.
This strikes me as almost conspiratorial thinking, and it's reflected in the article. At one point they say KOSA is unpopular but.. it isn't? These laws (KOSA, OSA) enjoy broad, bipartisan popularity and politicians are jumping on the bandwagon because they want votes. It really is as simple as that.
There's absolutely no way to counter this, or at least to round off the censorship power-grab this is allowing, if we don't admit to ourselves that people have become suspicious of the tech sector (us) and are reaching to clip our wings - starting with access to their kids.
The laws are only moderately popular in the abstract, but when you show people the reality and the future implications then popularity drops. The key is educating people about the dangers of this type of legislation, including dangers to privacy and authoritarian control over information. In the US especially both major parties hate each other with a passion; this animosity can be leveraged with proper framing.
What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?
If the politicians keep voting for things their constituents don't (and in these cases actively push back against so hard that the politician are forced to withdraw the push) that seems like strong evidence that politicians are doing something with an external incentive...
Politicians having bad incentives (e.g. campaign donations) isn't conspiracy thinking, it's a documented reality. Hell, we even had a supreme court judge taking a present from somebody who's case he was ACTIVELY OVERSEEING.
So far as I know there's nothing confounding here - people from across the political spectrum just seem to think it's a good idea to introduce age checks and to restrict children from accessing adult content.
The Christian right has been pushing for this forever. They finally acquired enough political and cultural purchase to get this measure pushed over the line.
Internet Gatekeeping, ID Cards, New Facial Recognition Powers, Secret government talks have identified a huge problem, planned all this during the covid years is my guess. Something is going down and this is their safest bet i reckon. Possibly to do with unregistered recent inhabitants and improving the capability to identify them. That movie Scarface in the first 25 minutes tells you something.
Google is suddenly asking to verify my age on an account I have used for five years linked to my credit card. This is about surveillance of all of us, not "protecting kids".
I think all of this has gone overboard, even though I agree that children should not be exposed to pornography, I don't know what to do about it because I expect parents to monitor their child's Internet usage, which is a losing ideal. Are there better alternatives?
Just because something isn't ideal doesn't mean it's worth making a law about. Running with scissors -- not best practice. Worth trying to legislate? Absolutely not.
Somebody who's 17 choosing to look at porn? Not in America's top 1 million problems.
Do something similar to what we do with video: make a government enforced voluntary rating system (that is, you use if you want, if you use and lie, the government hits you) with a standard where sites can tell their ratings to the clients.
Have the parents decide if they will use the rating for anything.
As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should be responsible for managing kids’ devices, and provide them with the device-level tools for doing so. If a parent lets a 10 year old hang out in a sketchy alleyway every weekend, we would blame them for the inevitable consequences. Why do we not blame them for failing to monitor what their kids are up to online?
And before someone tries to bore me with anecdotes about how your particular kid evaded whatever restrictions you put in place, I think if kids put in thoughtful effort and planning to evade restrictions then parents are off the hook. Same as if a kid stages an elaborate ruse (one that would fool most parents) to get out of the house and drink with friends. That’s not on you. Parents aren’t prison wardens and we shouldn’t ask for a police state to fill in parenting gaps.
Making the state into the parent will affect us all, not just kids. I (and plenty of others) will fight to the end to preserve the last vestiges of the free, open internet. Overlay networks and even sneakernet if necessary. We’re not going to accept authoritarian control of communications no matter how much politicians want it.
Well said. This is a social failure being exploited by shrude politicians so they usurp more authority. Replacing parents with the state keeps playing out, and keeps being a horrible idea.
1. No smart phones for the child before the age of NN, me I say 18. A Smart phone makes a great High School Graduation gift.
2. Only internet access from a desktop computer with a hosts file that the child cannot change. That probably means no Microsoft Windows PC.
See: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.
It's impractical in today's world to raise children without access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.
What's more important is to know what your kids are getting into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.
For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep her mouth shut.
I consider myself lucky to have grown up before the internet, but after local BBS' were a thing. My parents had absolutely no idea what went on in those systems, and I found the freedom incredible. Being able to explore and spread my wings a bit was a huge part of my childhood and teen years, and it wouldn't have been possible if my parents were hovering over my shoulder, or if I were unable to make an account because I wasn't 18.
That said, I was mostly dealing with griefers in Trade Wars or LoRD, and the worst thing I could find locally was GIFs of women in bikinis (and waiting for them to download was an excellent way to learn patience). I didn't have to worry so much about the threats that exist today online.
I am so grateful that I grew up when I did and got to experience that.
And when I was a kid some of my peers were watching Al Queda execution videos.
I don’t know what the solution is, but I do not think kids should have unrestricted access to the internet, especially if their parents can’t/won’t set limits.
I remember winning a 10-kill LORD game on a local BBS. It took ages of me staying up until midnight to kill all the resurrected players after the daily reset. I had only one real competitor on that server and he gave up after I slew the dragon twice in one week (due to great luck.)
Guess at some point in the future it will come out who bankrolled all this because multiple countries in Europe and America don’t just roll something like this out in 8 months organically without someone paying off politicians to push it
This seems like an attempt to leverage something widely regarded as reasonable (stop kids from accessing pornographic content without parental oversight) as the camel's nose through the tent to establish widespread identity tracking on the internet.
I think it's possible that there are secretive efforts to destroy permissionless access to the internet, but my guess is that states are simply copying each other and/or global conditions are similar enough that they naturally come to the same conclusions around the same time.
A somewhat analogous situation is how landlords raise rents in sync with each other, not because they're intentionally colluding to fix prices, but because nowadays it's easy to see average rental prices in neighborhoods, and the natural strategy is to set your rental prices based on that.
> my guess is that states are simply copying each other and/or global conditions are similar enough that they naturally come to the same conclusions around the same time.
I think that's the wrong guess. Even with chat control, in some previous forms, the proposals came of the back of lobbying. One such case was Ashton Kutcker's startup https://www.ftm.eu/articles/ashton-kutchers-non-profit-start...
The more recent proposals for chat control were drafted by non-public "high level groups", the identity of which wasn't revealed to the public https://mullvad.net/en/why-privacy-matters/going-dark
Do you think the main force is misplaced good intentions (which I assume is what drives Ashton Kutcher) or more sinister intentional efforts to harm the public?
Off-topic, but actually a number of landlords raise prices in sync with each other because they use price-setting services like RealPage that intentionally try to maximize rents across multiple landlords. They just settled a lawsuit over this: https://www.propublica.org/article/doj-realpage-settlement-r...
The fight for this kind of legislature has been ongoing for many years as part of a broader program that seeks to shape the kinds of information that can be stored, consumed, and propagated on the Internet. Age verification is only one branch of the fight, but an important one to the many who support government control: it is an inroad that allows governments to say they have a stake in who sees what.
Do social movements _always_ have people at the top pulling the strings? Is it _never_ the case that even when you can identify thought leaders, the movement itself is organic and broadly supported?
It has nothing to do with age gating, and everything to do with tracking. While there may be some funding going on behind the scenes, governments love tracking on its own merits.
It would be excellent to know who is pushing this and through what means. There is some unprecedented alignment across borders to restrict access and rights.
Plot twist: It's Ashton Kutcher.
https://www.thecut.com/article/ashton-kutcher-thorn-spotligh...
This strikes me as almost conspiratorial thinking, and it's reflected in the article. At one point they say KOSA is unpopular but.. it isn't? These laws (KOSA, OSA) enjoy broad, bipartisan popularity and politicians are jumping on the bandwagon because they want votes. It really is as simple as that.
There's absolutely no way to counter this, or at least to round off the censorship power-grab this is allowing, if we don't admit to ourselves that people have become suspicious of the tech sector (us) and are reaching to clip our wings - starting with access to their kids.
The laws are only moderately popular in the abstract, but when you show people the reality and the future implications then popularity drops. The key is educating people about the dangers of this type of legislation, including dangers to privacy and authoritarian control over information. In the US especially both major parties hate each other with a passion; this animosity can be leveraged with proper framing.
What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?
If the politicians keep voting for things their constituents don't (and in these cases actively push back against so hard that the politician are forced to withdraw the push) that seems like strong evidence that politicians are doing something with an external incentive...
Politicians having bad incentives (e.g. campaign donations) isn't conspiracy thinking, it's a documented reality. Hell, we even had a supreme court judge taking a present from somebody who's case he was ACTIVELY OVERSEEING.
> What do you mean it's not unpopular? How many voters have ever expressed interest in this?
UK: https://yougov.co.uk/topics/society/survey-results/daily/202... US: https://issueone.org/press/new-poll-finds-near-universal-pub... Aus: https://au.yougov.com/politics/articles/51000-support-for-un...
So far as I know there's nothing confounding here - people from across the political spectrum just seem to think it's a good idea to introduce age checks and to restrict children from accessing adult content.
The Christian right has been pushing for this forever. They finally acquired enough political and cultural purchase to get this measure pushed over the line.
Internet Gatekeeping, ID Cards, New Facial Recognition Powers, Secret government talks have identified a huge problem, planned all this during the covid years is my guess. Something is going down and this is their safest bet i reckon. Possibly to do with unregistered recent inhabitants and improving the capability to identify them. That movie Scarface in the first 25 minutes tells you something.
What does the movie Scarface have to say about it?
https://www.realclearhistory.com/2017/04/01/the_migrant_cris...
https://www.reddit.com/r/moviequestions/comments/133gbzl/in_...
https://www.vice.com/en/article/we-talked-to-migrants-about-...
Social media is more damaging to kids than porn
Porn is a special subset of social media.
Google is suddenly asking to verify my age on an account I have used for five years linked to my credit card. This is about surveillance of all of us, not "protecting kids".
I think all of this has gone overboard, even though I agree that children should not be exposed to pornography, I don't know what to do about it because I expect parents to monitor their child's Internet usage, which is a losing ideal. Are there better alternatives?
Just because something isn't ideal doesn't mean it's worth making a law about. Running with scissors -- not best practice. Worth trying to legislate? Absolutely not.
Somebody who's 17 choosing to look at porn? Not in America's top 1 million problems.
> I don't know what to do about it
Do something similar to what we do with video: make a government enforced voluntary rating system (that is, you use if you want, if you use and lie, the government hits you) with a standard where sites can tell their ratings to the clients.
Have the parents decide if they will use the rating for anything.
As a culture we just have to come to accept that parents should be responsible for managing kids’ devices, and provide them with the device-level tools for doing so. If a parent lets a 10 year old hang out in a sketchy alleyway every weekend, we would blame them for the inevitable consequences. Why do we not blame them for failing to monitor what their kids are up to online?
And before someone tries to bore me with anecdotes about how your particular kid evaded whatever restrictions you put in place, I think if kids put in thoughtful effort and planning to evade restrictions then parents are off the hook. Same as if a kid stages an elaborate ruse (one that would fool most parents) to get out of the house and drink with friends. That’s not on you. Parents aren’t prison wardens and we shouldn’t ask for a police state to fill in parenting gaps.
Making the state into the parent will affect us all, not just kids. I (and plenty of others) will fight to the end to preserve the last vestiges of the free, open internet. Overlay networks and even sneakernet if necessary. We’re not going to accept authoritarian control of communications no matter how much politicians want it.
Well said. This is a social failure being exploited by shrude politicians so they usurp more authority. Replacing parents with the state keeps playing out, and keeps being a horrible idea.
That's a very good point
Repurpose the IPv4 "evil bit" as an "is adult" bit.
> I don't know what to do about it
1. No smart phones for the child before the age of NN, me I say 18. A Smart phone makes a great High School Graduation gift.
2. Only internet access from a desktop computer with a hosts file that the child cannot change. That probably means no Microsoft Windows PC. See: https://someonewhocares.org/hosts/
eazy-peezy
You either don't have kids, or your children are adults.
It's impractical in today's world to raise children without access to devices like tablets and smart phones. That's like having a sugar-free, no TV, hand-sewn, ect, ect, household.
What's more important is to know what your kids are getting into, making sure they are comfortable discussing what they see, and teaching them independent decision making skills.
For example, a few years ago, my then seven-year-old complained to me about all of the Jesus videos that were popping up on Youtube. I told her to thumbs down them, and now Youtube no longer suggests them. She also knows that if other kids watch Jesus videos, that's their right and to keep her mouth shut.
>> Hmm I can't find any porn on the internet, better ask around
> Sure Timmy I'll send you porn, but it's illegal and I'm taking a big risk here so you gotta do something for me, also you can't tell anyone
You've failed to solve the porn problem and now you've created a larger grooming/CDM problem.
You can add porn sites to the hosts file yourself.
lots of antisemitism in this thread